Then he realized that they were making a detour to the execution ground, so, after all, he must be going to have his head cut off. He looked round him regretfully at the people swarming after him like ants, and unexpectedly in the crowd of people by the road he caught sight of Amah Wu. So that was why he had not seen her for so long: she was working in town.
Ah Q suddenly became ashamed of his lack of spirit, because he had not sung any lines from an opera. His thoughts revolved like a whirlwind: The Young Widow at Her Husband's Grave was not heroic enough. The words of "I regret to have killed" in The Battle of Dragon and Tiger were too poor. I'll thrash you with a steel mace was still the best. But when he wanted to raise his hands, he remembered that they were bound together; so he did not sing I'll thrash you either.
"In twenty years I shall be another…" [21] In his agitation Ah Q uttered half a saying which he had picked up himself but never used before. The crowd's roar "Good!!!" sounded like the growl of a wolf.
The cart moved steadily forward. During the shouting Ah Q's eyes turned in search of Amah Wu, but she did not seem to have seen him for she was looking intently at the foreign rifles carried by the soldiers.
So Ah Q took another look at the shouting crowd.
At that instant his thoughts revolved again like a whirlwind. Four years before, at the foot of the mountain, he had met a hungry wolf which had followed him at a set distance, wanting to eat him. He had nearly died of fright, but luckily he happened to have an axe in his hand, which gave him the courage to get back to Weichuang. He had never forgotten that wolf's eyes, fierce yet cowardly, gleaming like two will-o'-the-wisps, as if boring into him from a distance. Now he saw eyes more terrible even than the wolf's: dull yet penetrating eyes that, having devoured his words, still seemed eager to devour something beyond his flesh and blood. And these eyes kept following him at a set distance.
These eyes seemed to have merged into one, biting into his soul.
"Help, help!"
But Ah Q never uttered these words. All had turned black before his eyes, there was a buzzing in his ears, and he felt as if his whole body were being scattered like so much light dust.
As for the after-effects of the robbery, the most affected was the successful provincial candidate, because the stolen goods were never recovered. All his family lamented bitterly. Next came the Chao household; for when the successful county candidate went into town to report the robbery, nor only did he have his pigtail cut off by bad revolutionaries, but he had to pay a reward of twenty thousand cash into the bargain; so all the Chao family lamented bitterly too. From that day forward they gradually assumed the air of the survivors of a fallen dynasty.
As for any discussion of the event, no question was raised in Weichuang. Naturally all agreed that Ah Q had been a bad man, the proof being that he had been shot; for if he had not been bad, how could he have been shot? But the consensus of opinion in town was unfavourable. Most people were dissatisfied, because a shooting was nor such a fine spectacle as a decapitation; and what a ridiculous culprit he had been too, to pass through so many streets without singing a single line from an opera They had followed him for nothing.
December 1921
Lu Xun
[1] In Chinese this novel was called Supplementary Biographies of the Gamblers.
[2] The Three Cults were Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. The Nine Schools included the Confucian, Taoist, Legalist and Moist schools, as well as others. Novelists, who did not belong to any of these, were considered not quite respectable.
[3] A book by Feng Wu of the Ching dynasty (1644-1911).
[4] A phrase first used in the third century B.C. Bamboo and silk were writing material in ancient China.
[5] The cassia blooms in the month of the Moon Festival. Also, according to Chinese folklore, it is believed that the shadow on the moon is a cassia tree.
[6] 1880- 1942. A professor of Peking University at this time, he edited the monthly New Youth. Later he became a renegade from the Chinese Communist Party.
[7] An old school primer, in which the surnames were written into verse.
[8] This phrase was often used in self-praise by Hu Shih, the well-known reactionary politician and writer.
[9] A quotation from Mencius (372-289 B.C.).
[10] A quotation from the old classic Zuo Zhuan.
[11] Ta Chi, of the twelfth century B.C., was the concubine of the last king of the Shang dynasty. Pao Szu, of the eighth century B.C., was the concubine of the last king of the Western Chou dynasty. Tiao Chan was the concubine of Tung Cho, a powerful minister of the third century A.D.
[12] Confucius said that at thirty he "stood firm." The phrase was later used to indicate that a man was thirty years old.
[13] A line from The Battle of Dragon and Tiger, an opera popular in Shaohsing. It told how Chao Kuang-yin, the first emperor of the Sung dynasty, fought with another general.
[14] [Note: Day 14] The day on which Shaohsing was freed in the 1911 Revolution.
[15] [Note: Chung Chen] Chung Chen, the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigned from 1628 to 1644. He hanged himself before the insurgent peasants army under Li Tzu-cheng entered Peking.
[16] [Note: censer] Highly decorative bronze censers were made during the Hsuan Te period (1426-1435) of the Ming dynasty.
[17] The Liberty Party was called Zi You Dang. The villagers, not understanding the word Liberty, turned Zi You into Shi You, which means persimmon oil.
[18] The highest literary degree in the Ching dynasty (1644-1911).
[19] An immortal in Chinese folk legend, always portrayed with flowing hair.
[20] One of the earliest legendary monarchs in China.
[21] "In twenty years I shall be another stout young fellow" was a phrase often used by criminals before execution, to show their scorn of death.